Is your team working at full speed yet still falling behind? Then it might be time to rethink your multitasking in project management.
For a long time it was suspected but never systematically studied. Now it has been scientifically confirmed: those who try to handle too many things at once become ineffective. And this negative multitasking ultimately damages business success.
Who hasn’t been frustrated by constant interruptions that make it impossible to finish a task on time, no matter how hard you try? Or by ever-shifting priorities — something is always on fire somewhere, and tasks that were top-priority yesterday keep getting pushed to the back burner. Here’s a consoling thought: you are not alone.
Quite the contrary: working on many different projects in parallel is, according to a study conducted in German companies between April and June 2016, the primary problem in corporate management. 60 percent of the 500 project managers surveyed believe that a significant share of effort is spent on non-value-adding activities. And even more strikingly — nearly 70 percent estimate that roughly one-third of project duration could be saved, if it weren’t for the typical problems that managers and employees in multi-project environments face every day.
Negative Multitasking as an Effectiveness Killer
In most organizations, employees are not working on just one project within a given time frame. More often than not, the same person is involved in multiple projects simultaneously — or even carries responsibility across them. Only one-fiftieth (!) of survey respondents report that they never have to work on several tasks in parallel. This complicates the necessary Team Building process and makes it hard to focus on a single objective and meet a given deadline.
These problems are symptomatic and are addressed precisely in the study „Multitasking im Projektmanagement. Status Quo und Potentiale”. The survey of managing directors, project managers, portfolio managers, PMO leads, and others involved in project management was conducted by the German company VISTEM in cooperation with the University of Applied Sciences Koblenz, and represents the first scientifically grounded survey on the topic of multi-project management.
Multitasking in Project Management Is Harmful
Constantly shifting priorities, interruptions, and a lack of management support don’t just lead to employee dissatisfaction — they clearly drive up effort in projects. This is a hard fact backed by clear numbers:
- Only one-tenth of respondents can complete tasks without interruption.
- Nearly 70 percent of team leads frequently face shifting priorities.
- As many as 80 percent of respondents stated that frequent changes to operational priorities lead to constant disruptions in the project flow.
Add to this the lack of management support, which causes delays in roughly 70 percent of cases.
And here’s another number worth reflecting on: more than three-quarters of projects start insufficiently prepared — leading to rework and additional effort.
Conclusion: A quarter of respondents from companies with a high degree of multitasking rate their company’s overall success as significantly worse.
Further reading
Read more about team management tips or get an overview of project management methods.
Editor and Writer
Gabriella Martin is a Yale University graduate and holds a Master's degree in German Literature from the University of Tübingen. She loves explaining complex things in simple terms.
